I said close to maxing out, not maxing out, but your point is well taken. Yes, obviously the disproportion of Spanish speakers is due to the “demand.” The next question is whether boarding schools should be merely reacting to this demand or, instead, influencing it.
In the SPS directory, there are 15 modern language faculty listed: 7 are Spanish teachers. Groton: 6 of 11 are Spanish teachers. Hotchkiss: 7 for 15. This is way too much. What’s wrong with encouraging kids to try something different?
There is a reason that some economic studies do not see the point of learning Spanish (social services aside): tons of people in the U.S. already know Spanish.
If you are making an international business argument for Spanish, it really does have to go with Portuguese to some extent (Latin America is what matters — not Spain).
With all of these Spanish teachers, I would imagine it would be very difficult for kids to max out the course offerings. What I am suggesting is that, instead of taking another Spanish class after Spanish 4 or so, kids should be thinking about starting Portuguese (or 1 out of 7 of those kids should be, thereby having but 1 less Spanish teacher and 1 Portuguese teacher; actually, 1 out of 9 or 10 will suffice, because some will want to start with Portuguese to begin with).
In any event, there is plenty of time in college to study abroad, to take more Portuguese, and even Spanish; that’s when you can “go deeper”.
But might I suggest that 1/2 of boarding school’s modern language offerings should not be allocated to a language that already has more native speakers in the United States than the entire country of Spain? Just my opinion…